space program – Page 5 – SolderSmoke Daily News

At the Comet

That’s an awe-inspiring “selfie”! This looks like something out of Kubrick’s “2001 — A Space Odyssey.” Congratulations to the European Space Agency!

Using the CIVA camera on Rosetta’s Philae lander, the spacecraft have snapped a ‘selfie’ at comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The image was taken on 7 September from a distance of about 50 km from the comet, and captures the side of the Rosetta spacecraft and one of Rosetta’s 14 m-long solar wings, with 67P/C-G in the background. Two images with different exposure times were combined to bring out the faint details in this very high contrast situation.

Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics” http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

Hacker with The Knack Does Well, Working for JPL

Wow. This guy has a really inspirational Knack story. He welded (with coat hangers!) a sidecar onto his bike when he was a kid. He majored in Physics and Theater. He did all kinds of hardware and software hacks. He plays a Theravin in a band. He now flies spacecraft for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

And Congratulations to Peter Parker, VK3YE, for having one of his ingenious hacks picked up by Hackaday:
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/06/dusty-junk-bin-downconverter-receives-fm-on-an-am-radio/

Thanks Hackaday! And Happy Tenth Birthday to You!

Beautiful Pictures of Mars from India’s Spacecraft

Congratulations to the Indian Space Research Organization. They put a spacecraft into Mars orbit on their first attempt, and they are getting back some spectacular images.

I also like the banner on their web site:

More info here:

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c25/Imagegallery/mom-images.aspx

Making Hardware for Mars in a Lab in New York City

I liked this video about building hardware for a Mars mission at a lab in New York City.

http://www.sciencefriday.com/video/08/10/2012/building-for-mars-sometimes-painful-always-glorious.html

ISEE-3 Recovery Hiccup

Now that’s a McDonald’s that you would want to work in! That’s the headquarters for the ISEE-3 recovery effort. (Is it also the place where they recovered the long-lost moon photos from the 1960s?)

This week the ISEE-3 effort hit a bump in the road. Getting old gear to work properly is never easy. Be patient fellows!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/us/in-effort-to-shift-abandoned-nasa-craft-a-hiccup-or-burp.html?action=click&contentCollection=Science&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article

Contact Reestablished with ISEE-3 Satellite

http://spacecollege.org/isee3/we-are-now-in-command-of-the-isee-3-spacecraft.html

Hackers Recover 1960’s Moon Pictures

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/lost-lunar-photos-recovered-by-great-feats-of-hackerdom-developed-at-a-mcdonalds/

Thanks to Mark, K6HX, for alerting me to this wonderful project.

A Worthy Cause: Help Save the ISEE-3 Spacecraft!

http://www.rockethub.com/projects/42228-isee-3-reboot-project-by-space-college-skycorp-and-spaceref

Here is an excerpt from the above website:

Our plan is simple: we intend to contact the ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) spacecraft, command it to fire its engine and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission – a mission it began in 1978. ISEE-3 was rechristened as the International Comet Explorer (ICE). If we are successful it may also still be able to chase yet another comet.

Working in collaboration with NASA we have assembled a team of engineers, programmers, and scientists – and have a large radio telescope fully capable of contacting ISEE-3. If we are successful we intend to facilitate the sharing and interpretation of all of the new data ISEE-3 sends back via crowd sourcing.

Time is short. And this project is not without significant risks. We need your financial help. ISEE-3 must be contacted in the next month or so and it must complete its orbit change maneuvers no later than mid-June 2014. There is excitement ahead as well: part of the maneuvers will include a flyby of the Moon at an altitude of less than 50 km.

Our team members at Morehead State University, working with AMSAT-DL in Germany, have already detected the carrier signals from both of ISEE-3’s transmitters. When the time comes, we will be using the large dish at Morehead State University to contact the spacecraft and give it commands.
Thanks to Dave, WA8JNM, for the heads up on this.

Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics” http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

German Radio Amateurs Receive Signals from ICE Spacecraft

The wizards at AMSAT-DL have done it again! Their latest feat of outer space derring-do is the reception of the 5 watt (QRP!) signal from the lost (now found) ICE spacecraft. Details here:
http://amsat-uk.org/2014/03/09/radio-amateurs-receive-nasa-isee-3ice-spacecraft/

Here is their facility:

Taking the Knack a Bit Too Far

ISEE-3 Spacecraft Returns after Being Forgotten

Hack-A-Day has issued a challenge to hams and hackers:

http://hackaday.com/2014/02/14/call-for-hams-and-hackers-welcome-iceisee-3-home/#more-114769

If a BITX 20/40 would help, I stand ready to assist!

How they took the iconic Apollo 8 Earthrise Photo (Amazing Video)

I was ten years old and totally obsessed with the space program. This video brought back a lot of the magic. Wow. You really have to see this one.

The NASA Juno Fly-by “Hams say HI to Juno” Video (very nice)

First Pictures of the Far Side of the Moon (1959!)

On October 7, 1959, the Soviets sent an “automatic interplanetary station” to the moon. This, in itself, was an amazing achievement. Even more amazing is how they managed — using 1950s technology — to photograph the far side of the moon and get the images back to the earth.

The Soviet document on the Harvard site (below) says that the transmitter put out “a few watts” and used semiconductors. There appears, however, to have been at least one vacuum tube aboard (the cathode ray tube used to scan the chemically developed photo negatives). Frequency modulated analog video similar to FAX) was used to send the data.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1962IAUS…14….7L/0000007.000.html

From Wikipedia:

Luna-3 was the first successful three-axis stabilized spacecraft. During most of the mission, the spacecraft was spin stabilized, but for photography of the Moon, the spacecraft oriented one axis toward the Sun and then a photocell was used to detect the Moon and orient the cameras towards it. Detection of the Moon signaled the camera cover to open and the photography sequence to start automatically. The images alternated between both cameras during the sequence. After photography was complete, the film was moved to an on-board processor where it was developed, fixed, and dried. Commands from the Earth were then given to move the film into a scanner where a spot produced by a cathode ray tube was projected through the film onto a photoelectric multiplier. The spot was scanned across the film and the photomultiplier converted the intensity of the light passing through the film into an electric signal which was transmitted to the Earth (via frequency-modulated analog video, similar to a facsimile). A frame could be scanned with a resolution of 1000 (horizontal) lines and the transmission could be done at a slow-scan television rate at large distances from the Earth and a faster rate at closer ranges.
The camera took 29 pictures over 40 minutes on 7 October 1959, from 03:30 UT to 04:10 UT at distances ranging from 63,500 km to 66,700 km above the surface, covering 70% of the lunar far side. Seventeen (some say twelve) of these frames were successfully transmitted back to the Earth, and six were published (frames numbered 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, and 35). They were mankind’s first views of the far hemisphere of the Moon.

More info: http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/Luna3story.html#Film

Moon Launch from Virginia (video)

NASA launched a mission to the moon last night. The rocket went out of Wallops Island, Virginia and was visible from Washington D.C. I forgot about it, so we missed seeing it ourselves, but this fellow got a nice view from the balcony of his Washington apartment.